My cooperating teacher was a minute or two late to class because she was in a meeting so the students did not get settled immediately. They were talking, walking around the room, and one was eating breakfast. When my C.T. walked in, she immediately put a Back of Binder (B.O.B.) question on the board for the students to pull out a sheet of paper and answer. A B.O.B. question is a type of Do Now, where the students will put their sheets of paper in the back of their binder after they are graded for participating in writing the question and answering it. As soon as she put the question up students started getting focused because that is a routine they have in the classroom. My C.T. is really good about moving around the entire classroom and engaging all students. Another way my C.T. gets students to participate is by joking around with them and making them laugh. Never before have I seen a student say to a teacher “I love you Miss, because you’re funny!” My C.T. pulls humor into the classroom to engage her students and it is clear it works. She had all but one or two students participating during her class.
What is interesting about this class is proximity to the teacher has little to do with how engaged they are. The student at the front of the class was the most disruptive, calling out and getting out of his seat. My teacher threatened to go to his soccer game with a sign that said “ loves biology and his mom” and disrupt his game. That immediately made the student laugh and got him to stop being disruptive in class, for the most part. Other times during the lesson kids were looking at their shoes, styling their hair, and chatting with each other (mostly about what was happening in class). In general, this class was on task and paying attention for the duration of the lesson. Another thing that surprised me is that even though part of the lesson was on Google Chromebooks, I did not see a single website that wasn’t related to the lesson. Some students were looking at their cell phones briefly, or talking to other students, but those incidents were few and far between. This class was a “credit recovery” type of class, where students could make up science credit if they failed out of a different class. For some reason, I had thought these students may have had more difficulty focusing, but I was pleasantly surprised that was not the case.
Student engagement is paramount in the classroom. If students aren’t engaged in the lesson, they are going to be disruptive to other students and not complete their work. I hope to learn a lot from my C.T., because after 17 years in this classroom I believe she has a great handle on what works and what doesn’t. I hope to employ humor in the classroom as well, in addition to creating engaging lessons. Just the other day in this class we did a lab using cookies to construct cladograms- all students were engaged because it was a unique activity and they all got to eat the cookies at the end. Showing them things they’ve never seen before and sharing interesting stories should help student engagement in my own classroom. A large part of classroom management is also the kind of culture that exists in the classroom. For the most part, this school has students that are highly respectful and care about the adults in the building (which is not the case that I have witnessed in all urban schools). Starting out the year with clear expectations for learning will help engage the students in the day to day.
This image is the path my CT takes around her classroom.
What is interesting about this class is proximity to the teacher has little to do with how engaged they are. The student at the front of the class was the most disruptive, calling out and getting out of his seat. My teacher threatened to go to his soccer game with a sign that said “ loves biology and his mom” and disrupt his game. That immediately made the student laugh and got him to stop being disruptive in class, for the most part. Other times during the lesson kids were looking at their shoes, styling their hair, and chatting with each other (mostly about what was happening in class). In general, this class was on task and paying attention for the duration of the lesson. Another thing that surprised me is that even though part of the lesson was on Google Chromebooks, I did not see a single website that wasn’t related to the lesson. Some students were looking at their cell phones briefly, or talking to other students, but those incidents were few and far between. This class was a “credit recovery” type of class, where students could make up science credit if they failed out of a different class. For some reason, I had thought these students may have had more difficulty focusing, but I was pleasantly surprised that was not the case.
Student engagement is paramount in the classroom. If students aren’t engaged in the lesson, they are going to be disruptive to other students and not complete their work. I hope to learn a lot from my C.T., because after 17 years in this classroom I believe she has a great handle on what works and what doesn’t. I hope to employ humor in the classroom as well, in addition to creating engaging lessons. Just the other day in this class we did a lab using cookies to construct cladograms- all students were engaged because it was a unique activity and they all got to eat the cookies at the end. Showing them things they’ve never seen before and sharing interesting stories should help student engagement in my own classroom. A large part of classroom management is also the kind of culture that exists in the classroom. For the most part, this school has students that are highly respectful and care about the adults in the building (which is not the case that I have witnessed in all urban schools). Starting out the year with clear expectations for learning will help engage the students in the day to day.
This image is the path my CT takes around her classroom.